“Aaron?” I say, my voice coming out louder than I mean it to. The three boys with him – men, now that I look at them – jump back as if my voice is a cattle prod and they are the steers.
Two of them are supporting Aaron, his arms around their shoulders. His head is lolling around. I’ve never seen him like this, never thought he got like this, and the sight makes me want to press on the gas and drive far, far away from here, as if it never happened. I think of all the times I’ve imagined Aaron reaching out to me, or me reaching out to him, all the times I’ve imagined how we’d fix what was once so good between us but that I broke because I was scared by how much I wanted him.
I never imagined it would be like this. Me coming to get him from the parking lot of Atlanta’s most infamous strip club, with alcohol fumes coming so fast and strong off his breath that I can smell him from inside the car. I didn’t think I’d have to find him in the company of three guys I don’t recognize, guys who are leering at me through the open window, guys who are snickering and muttering things under their breath I can’t hear but I can guess from their eyes and their mouths. I wonder what Aaron is doing with them.
His eyes focus on me for a second, and he smiles, but it isn’t his smile, it’s a sloppy smile and it looks like it might slip off his face and fall on the ground.
“Wing!” he cries, and tries to step toward the car but he stumbles and the guy next to him catches him and holds him upright. The one not supporting him steps toward the car, his manner vaguely menacing. I grip the steering wheel harder and put on my best bitch face.
“You’re the girl?” he says with a sneer. I don’t give him the satisfaction of a reply. Instead, I narrow my eyes just a tiny bit more and wish that I could shoot acid out of them that would melt a man. The streetlight behind him flickers, making his silhouette jump and grow. He’s wearing an Atlanta Braves cap pulled down low, and it’s shadowing his face. I’m surprised he isn’t wearing sunglasses to complete the look.
“Yo,” he says, now leaning into the window, and it takes all my resolve not to lean away from him. I sit still as a statue, my fingers glued to the steering wheel, my feet itching to run, itching to take me away from here because now I recognize him. It’s Jasper. Aaron’s somehow cousin. Recognizing him doesn’t make me feel any better. It makes me feel worse.
I should never have come. It was stupid. But it doesn’t matter that it was stupid or that I shouldn’t have, because no matter how you look at it or tilt it or twist it, I will always come when Aaron calls. Jasper leans farther into the car and his breath smells like whiskey and cigarettes and it mixes with his cheap cologne and the whole stench of him makes me feel sick.
“Girl, I asked you a question.”
I wish, for what feels like the millionth time, that Marcus were here. The way he used to be. Not as he is now, not in the hospital bed crying for more morphine, his limbs wasting away, glaring at me when he thinks I don’t see, pretending to be happy about my running but not even managing a smile, moaning and being someone completely different from the big brother I remember. In the back of my brain a thought prickles and expands. There is a very good chance that if Marcus were here, he would have gone to the Clermont with these boys, but the only difference would be instead of Aaron being held up, he’d be the one holding Marcus up.
My continued silence is too much for Jasper, who makes a quick move, like a snake, and suddenly something hard and metallic slams against the back window of the car, making me jump.
It’s a gun. This asshole has pulled a gun on me because I won’t answer his question. I know I should be scared, but instead anger fills me like oxygen, expanding in my lungs, and when I exhale I’m surprised that smoke doesn’t come out. No, not smoke. Fire.
My eyes are on his, and now that I look closer I can see that his pupils are dilated and I know he’s on something, and I wonder if Aaron is on something too, but I don’t have time to dwell on that because if I do I know I won’t be able to do anything else, and so with my eyes locked on the eyes of Jasper, the gun-wielding junkie, because that’s what I’ve decided he is, I change gear and reverse. Just a bit. Enough to almost, almost run over his toes.
It has the desired effect. He jumps back as if he’s been scalded, waving his gun.
“I’m here to pick up Aaron,” I say, and my voice comes out stronger than I feel and I am sure this is because of the anger coursing through me. “Could you put him in the car?”
“Why?”
“Because he called me and I came to get him and if you don’t stop waving that gun around like a damn lunatic I swear to God I will run you down right now and claim self-defense. Now put Aaron in the car.” To prove my point I lean on the car horn, and it blares into the night.